In today’s collect, we pray to God, “that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the quick and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal….”

+ In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

“Preparing for Death”

I remember watching my father breathe his last breath and literally expire. One minute my father lay sick, and the next minute his body lay dead. Right before was the last minute of my life with him, and right after was the first minute of my life without him.

Anguish washed over my soul. I did not know how to breathe without him in my life; I did not know how to eat, sleep, or go to school without his presence. But I learned. And learning how to live my life without him was horrible beyond description.

We fear death. We fear death because in dying we leave this way of existence and head into another way of existence, a way which we know nothing about by personal experience.

We fear death because we have seen others die. We continue on, and they apparently do not. We wish to continue on, even if our current life is miserable. We instinctively cherish our own lives and do not want to give them up.

We fear death because death comes when the body sustains irreparable damage by accident, disease, or age. All three are deeply ugly in our sight. We shudder when we imagine ourselves receiving damage from a horrible accident, or succumbing to a deadly disease, or wasting away in our elder infirmity. We would rather live in our youthful bodies, or failing that, our bodies as we currently have them.

We fear death because we naturally perceive that death is contrary to the created order of things. Why would God create us if we were to die? God Incarnate, Christ Himself cried when He beheld the dead body of His friend Lazarus. If God who overcomes death cries at death, we who cannot overcome death certainly quail in its presence.

Death is one of the essential facts of Creation’s brokenness. The other is sin, intimately related to death.

In Genesis, we read that “God created the heaven and the earth.” And after each day of Creation, “God saw that it was good.” Except on the last day, when “God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.” On that sixth day, “God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good.”

So the human race is the capstone upon Creation, that finishing part that made it “very good” in God’s sight. We were to live with God for all eternity in the Garden. Possessing both body and soul, we were to walk with God and enjoy his immediate and direct presence.

But our ancestors broke our communion with God when they defied him and sought to live in power and glory without him, partaking of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. And lest they stretched forth their hands and partake of the Tree of Life, God expelled them from the Garden.

So it is that death is an unnatural state brought upon by Man’s Fall into sin. It is necessarily related to sin. Sin brought death into the world of men. The only way to remedy death is by remedying sin.

Death is a miserable predicament. Death breaks asunder that which God created to be one. We are meant to be whole, body and soul. Death is like unto divorce, which rips apart that which God has joined together. Once God has put these things together into one essential and holy thing, it is against nature and God to destroy it. Thus, death is an abomination by its nature and by its disobedience to God’s will.

We brought upon ourselves this death, this destruction. By following their will instead of God’s will, Adam and Eve chose to destroy themselves. They didn’t know what they were getting into, but out of their stupid lust they went and wrecked what God had created.

And we are no better than they were. You and I are guilty of this sin. We have caused our own deaths. Even the best of us “have sinned, and come short of the glory of God;” By thinking that our ways are better than God’s ways, we stray from him. God is the creator, nurturer, and sustainer of life; yet we think that we can create, nurture, and sustain ourselves away from him. Each one of us has earned his own death.

So from the time of Adam and Eve until the Annunciation to the Blessed Virgin Mary, death reigned in the lives of men without any sure remedy. But God did not leave men alone. The Patriarchs spoke with God personally, and he guided them. God gave the Law through Moses to Israel. God sent the Prophets to preach to Israel.

Then, as St. Paul wrote in Galatians iv.4: “But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman ….” Christ became Man, uniting the fulness of divinity and the fulness of humanity in one holy Person. St. Paul also wrote in Romans xiv.9, “For to this end Christ both died, and rose, and revived, that he might be Lord both of the dead and living.”

We need not die like those without hope. Christ took on our mortal human nature and died. God the Father sent God the Son into the world as the Christ, the Messiah, the Savior of the world. And He conquered death. But He conquered death in a most interesting way: Christ conquered death by dying Himself. He apparently yielded to sin and death.

But no! Christ rose from the grave, defeating death and sin. In Christ, we are victorious over the grave. The grave has claimed the life of almost every man who ever lived, save only Enos and Elijah in the Old Testament. Christ has destroyed the hold of the grave over us. Yet we must enter the grave just like our Lord Christ did. Each of us will die, but for those who are counted among the redeemed of the Lord, we will live with God for all eternity.

So, given that each of us must die unless the Lord returns first, it obviously follows that we must prepare for our deaths. I say obviously, but sometimes it doesn’t seem obvious at all. I want to forget that I will die, my body will rot, and my soul will flee. I want to live my life blissfully ignoring this obvious fact of my life. I want to ignore it because I want to do whatever I want whenever I want. I want to dictate the terms of my life to God, just like Adam and Eve did, just you do, just like we all do.

This is wrong. But we still do it. So, the first thing we must do to prepare for our inevitable end is to think upon our death each and every day. This is called memento mori. Some will object that this is morbid and sad. To this the Church answers that the only way to life everlasting is through faith in Christ, and that means that we must think on our death and on our Savior. So first, remember that you will die.

Secondly, we must not only remember that we will die but have faith in Christ and repent of our sins. The minimum duty of Churchmen, the Six Duties of Churchmen, are not only our least duty but also our saving path.

We must attend Mass each and every Sunday and Holy Day of Obligation. We must receive the Body and Blood of Christ at least three times a year, one of those times being during Christmastide. We must tithe, fast, and keep the Church’s rules for sexual relations. And we must keep our consciences clean. These tidily fall into three sections for preparing ourselves for Heaven.

First, we must focus upon the objective worship of Christ in the Mass. We each subjectively worship Christ in many parts of our lives, such as holy thoughts, devout feelings, and inspired sharing. But Christ gave us His Body and Blood to partake of it, not to ignore it. When we join ourselves with Christ’s offering of Himself to the Father, we mystically join together with Christ. A woman who has done this reverently for seventy years is better prepared to meet Christ’s Judgement than a man who mostly forgets to show up to worship.

Second, tithing, fasting, and keeping the Church’s Law of Marriage help us live our lives in the moral way Christ would have us live them. We ought to be generous, loving, patient, self-sacrificing, and treat our selves and other people’s selves in holiness and godliness. If we were to tithe, fast, and keep ourselves sexually as we are supposed to while worshipping God and keeping our consciences pure, then we would find ourselves moving in the right direction to God, thus preparing for our judgement.

Third, we must keep our consciences pure. On the one hand, we must avoid sin and eagerly seek after righteousness. On the other hand, we must confess our sins. Thus we repent, or turn away from, our sins. We should privately tell God each day what we have done wrong, our firm resolution to avoid doing that again, and asking him for forgiveness. We also can assist our devotion at Mass by remembering our sins and earnestly saying the confession with these sins on our hearts. We can also come to me or another priest and confess our sins in the Sacrament of Penance.

When our last hour comes, our soul will be brutally torn away from our body. Satan and the wicked demons will assail us at that hour to tempt us away from Christ with thoughts that He cannot save us, that our sins are more than He can forgive, and that we have no need of Christ at all. Although our guardian angel and patron saints will powerfully intercede for us at that moment, the singularly best way for us to prepare for the torment and temptation of our death is to be strong in prayer and pure in soul. And that requires preparation.

Advent is upon us. Holy Church has for many centuries preached on death this very Sunday, which is most proper for helping us prepare for Christ’s return or our death, whichever comes first.

This Advent, I urge you to prepare for the inevitable fate you face. I love you as my dear children. I want each and every one of you to prosper in the loving-kindness of Jesus Christ our Lord. I want each and every one of you to live with each other forever in God’s Kingdom. I want to enjoy your presence forever before God our Father in the Holy Ghost.

With these wishes of love and peace and enjoying you as you were made by our Lord God, I ask you this week to try at least one of two things. First, thoughtfully make a list of your sins and then reverently confess them to Christ either with the prayer of confession in the Prayer Book or in the Sacrament of Confession. Second, pick your most intractable or hardest to control sin and try very hard to confess and turn from it every day this week.

The best way to prepare is to exercise. The best way to prepare for a spiritual struggle is spiritual exercise. Try at least one of these confessions of sin this week and prepare to meet your maker. If you earnestly try, you will find yourself in better shape to be judged by Christ.

“that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the quick and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal….”

+ In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

“…If there had been a law given which could have given life, verily righteousness should have been by the law. But the scripture hath concluded all under sin, that the promise by faith of Jesus Christ might be given to them that believe.”

+ In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

“Trusting in Christ”

We are all under sin; not one of us can save himself from everlasting death. Only by faith in Christ are we saved.

We cannot earn our salvation. We cannot become righteous before God by following the Law of Moses. Following the Ten Commandments does not make us righteous before God. Following the Six Duties of Churchmen does not make us righteous before God. The Law and all such plans teach us how far short we fall from where we ought to be.

This helps us open up ourselves to God. The spiritual truth that we can do nothing to earn our salvation is difficult to hear. People listening to Christ preach found it difficult to hear; we sitting here at St. Luke Church find it difficult to hear.

God promised Abraham in Genesis xii.2-3: “And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing: And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.”

Abraham showed that he believed God by his willingness to obey God and sacrifice his son, Isaac. But after Abraham, the people knew the promise, but knowing the promise of greatness to come did nothing to inspire them to be good. Perhaps it made righteousness less desirable to pursue, for virtue takes effort, and Abraham’s descendants assuredly knew that their promise was to come true.

So God gave Moses the Law to give to Israel. Israel could never completely fulfill the Law of Moses, but they had it to guide them as they became a nation out in the wilderness, through the time of the judges, and of the kings, and of the prophets. They were taught righteousness.

St. Paul says as much in Galatians iii.24: “Wherefore the law was our schoolmasterto bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith.” The Law was powerless to lead Israel into righteousness. Ultimately, the Law showed us how we each were condemned as being not good enough.

John Wesley speaks to this:

Will it follow from hence that the law is against, opposite to, the promises of God? By no means. They are well consistent. But yet the law cannot give life, as the promise doth. If there had been a law which could have given life – Which could have entitled a sinner to life, God would have spared his own Son, and righteousness, or justification, with all the blessings consequent upon it, would have been by that law.

Similarly, Isaac Williams says:

The Law was to convince them of sin, and bring them to Christ: thus John the Baptist preached repentance; for if they had believed Moses they would have believed in Christ. The Law was but the means, not the end; but the Jews were now making it the end; whereas the end of the Law is Christ, in Whom is the promise, and the blessing, and the covenant, and righteousness, and life; not for a time only, but for ever. It was to this the prophets of old looked,’ to this the saints of the elder covenant aspired, to behold Christ, the end of the Law, in Whom dwells the fulness of all good, the love of God flowing down from Heaven, and embracing all men; as the fragrant oil that came down on the head of Aaron, and went to the skirts of his clothing.

We are not capable in our fallen, mortal, and limited state to fulfill the Law and earn for ourselves righteousness. The mightiest hero, the holiest saint, the wisest philosopher can no more earn his own righteousness before God than the weakest of us. We all are in the same boat when it comes to deserving our own salvation.

We do not do the work of salvation – Christ does. In Acts xxvi.14, St. Paul tells his personal story of the futility of seeking to earn salvation through righteous living instead of Christ: “And when we were all fallen to the earth, I heard a voice speaking unto me, and saying in the Hebrew tongue, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks.”

Indeed, when St. Paul addressed divisions in the Church, he said in 1 Corinthians iii.6: “I have planted, Apollos watered; but God gave the increase.” Christ, being God, is utterly trustworthy. We can completely depend upon Him. We do not live under the law, struggling and kicking. Each of us has our own work as members of Christ’s Body the Church, but we fool ourselves if we consider that our work is somehow necessary to the fruition of God’s work in us. Unless the Lord returns first, we shall each of us die. Not a single one of us is indispensable. Only Christ is indispensable, and we are made members of Him, and consequently into Christ’s indispensable character through faith and the Sacrament of Holy Baptism.

After all, we read in Proverbs iii.5: “Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding.” Depending upon Christ, we are not to depend upon ourselves. We are not to depend on the works of our hands.

But the works we create are not entirely worthless. We are to offer up to God the works of our hands. One of my spiritual heroes, the Cure d’Ars, St. Jean Marie Baptist Vianney, said, “All that we do without offering it to God is wasted.” Our work is important as a faithful response to Christ’s life-saving work of death and Resurrection. Thus we ought to not rely upon ourselves but place all our weight upon Christ.

And we are in no hurry. That anxious desire to hurry is a sign of brokenness, of corruption of our holy selves. Christ enjoys no anxiety. He neither races to His Passion in Jerusalem nor does He seek to avoid it.

Even our knowledge of God is imperfect. 1 Corinthians xiii.12: “For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.” We see imperfectly today but after Christ returns we shall see Him and know Him face to face. Until then, we only have faith – we trust that He is here saving us.

Christ shows us all love. Christ exemplifies sacrificial loving-kindness because He sacrificed Himself for us because He loved us when we were unworthy of His love. The Law teaches us that we are sinners who need Christ. It is thus for us not to try to earn our salvation through the Law but to believe and trust in Christ. When we lean upon Christ for support, He supports us with His love, and we are saved through God Incarnate and not the written Law.

We are called to believe in Christ, to follow Him, and to love like He loves. We must simply and meekly love Christ and our neighbor. We trust in Him and follow Him, conforming our lives to His holy life. We need not concern ourselves with earning our reward but following Him in His way.

This journey through life is a journey following Christ, not our own conceits. We must simply and earnestly rely upon Christ. It is in this way that we are free from both the Law and from anxiety. We don’t have to earn or deserve anything. All the doing happened before you and I showed up. Calvary happened almost twenty centuries ago. Our job is to open ourselves up and follow the Son of God, Christ Jesus our Lord.

Yet this does not mean that we are to be lazy and pay attention to frivolous things. This does mean that we live lives of assurance. We do not need to worry about our salvation, for Christ has already won that for us. We do not need to worry about our earthly legacy, for it will be swept away by the ravages of time and of little consequence in the afterlife. We do not need to worry about our loved ones, for the Great Physician and Lover of our Souls is looking after them far better than we ever could.

This does not mean that we give up. This means that we give in. We give in to Christ. We give in to relying upon Christ. We give in to following Christ. We give in to loving God and others like Christ first loved us.

And He even explains why. Loving-kindness. We read in St. John iii.16-17: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.”

“…If there had been a law given which could have given life, verily righteousness should have been by the law. But the scripture hath concluded all under sin, that the promise by faith of Jesus Christ might be given to them that believe.”

+ In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

+ In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

“Temptation in Our Lives, Churches, and Society”

Looking at today’s Epistle lesson, we should know that the Corinthians were proud converts from the pagan religions of Greece and Rome. Unlike many of the other church folk to whom St. Paul corresponded, they were not mostly converts from Judaism. Their problems were different.

The Corinthians were tempted to compromise with their old religion, the religion of their friends, families, and social superiors. The Corinthians were tempted to consider Holy Baptism and the Blessed Sacrament as magical talismans which warded off evil and ill health. Of course, they are nothing of the sort! These Sacraments connect us deeply into eternal life in Christ.

St. Paul wrote to former pagans living in a pagan society. He warns them from continuing to participate in banquets dedicated to heathen gods. These compromises were hazardous to their spiritual health. They were to avoid these sources of temptations lest what happened to Israel in the wilderness happen to them.

A healthy familiarity with Exodus comes in handy when reading this lesson. Like the Corinthians and their Holy Baptism, Israel underwent a type of baptism with Moses in the Red Sea. Like the Corinthians and receiving Holy Communion, Israel ate manna from Heaven and drank water which miraculously sprang from the rock. But these blessings did not keep Israel from being “overthrown in the wilderness”. They worshipped the golden calf and were punished. They tempted God and were destroyed by serpents. They rebelled from God and suffered horribly. In the end, only Caleb and Joshua out of all those thousands made it into the Holy Land. St. Paul writes, “Now all these things happened unto them for ensamples:” – or examples – “and they are written for our admonition.”

But with this warning to avoid compromise with unrighteousness and pacts with wickedness, St. Paul gives the Corinthians good news: God always helps us in temptation. At the end of the lesson we receive, along with our brethren the Corinthians, the promise that God will guard us from suffering unbearable temptation: “God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it.”

On the one hand, God only allowing us to be tempted at a level we can resist means that we are fully culpable for each and every sin we commit. We can resist every temptation. Therefore, if we fail to resist a temptation, we are to blame for not having resisted more.

On the other hand, God loves us and cares for us so much that he will not tolerate his beloved souls mistakenly breaking communion with Christ our Lord. Being grafted onto Christ, we never suffer any temptation which forces us to break communion with him without our consent. Christ wants us with Him for all eternity.

As an aside, notice that the Apostle to the Gentiles does not say here that God will not suffer us to receive more than we can handle. We often receive more than we can handle. I understand, not from experience, that young mothers can feel overwhelmed from lack of sleep and a demanding little baby. I sometimes temporarily feel overwhelmed. God will allow our decisions and the working of our mortal life to require more of us than we can possibly give. It is precisely at this time that we should turn to God for comfort, meaning both strength for the journey and consolation. We will never be tempted beyond what we can bear, but we may be given more to handle than we can bear.

Now, having seen how St. Paul considers temptation in First Corinthians, let us turn to three ways that we may be tempted. We may be tempted morally in our lives of personal sanctity such as bearing good fruit in our relationship with Christ and other people. We may be tempted sacramentally and ecclesiastically in our communal experience of worship, fellowship, service, and doctrine. And we may be tempted socially in our lives in society and culture.

We manfully fight against temptation to secure our moral lives. Three weeks ago we read in Romans vi that we were buried in Christ’s Crucifixion and raised in His Resurrection. Our old man of sin died, and we put on Christ. Two weeks ago we read that in Christ we went from earning wages of sin through our actions to receiving the free gift of God, “eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” Last week we read in Romans viii that we have received the spirit of adoption, making us sons of God. Instead of being slaves of sin, we are heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ. Out of this new life in Christ we are expected to bear good fruit as befits a good tree.

Christ recognizes that temptation is dangerous and includes in the prayer He taught His disciples “and lead us not into temptation”. St. Peter recognizes this and warns us in his first epistle, in words oft recited in Compline, “Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour: Whom resist stedfast in the faith.” We are to pray to avoid temptation. We are soberly to discern our actual situation regarding sin and temptation, sticking to the truth and not deceiving ourselves. We are to watch for temptation with vigilance, never letting down our guard and allowing temptation to take hold and grow like a cancer into sin. We are never in so great a danger as when we think that we are no longer susceptible to the power of temptation.

Since our old man of sin is dead and we are living in Christ, made one with His Body, we ought to strive to resist temptation and produce good works. We can only produce good works in conjunction with avoiding sin. Remember that the goodness of our good works does not come from our finite sinful lives but in Christ’s infinite holy life. We guard against temptation to keep producing good works that joyfully reflect the beauty of the world, love amongst men, and love between God and man.

Think of our consecrated lives in Christ as a clear mirror which reflects Christ’s love back at Him and our fellow man. Think of sin as besmirching that formerly clear mirror so that our reflection of Christ’s love is muddled and rendered ineffectual. We watch out for temptation to keep our good works good.

We manfully fight against temptation to secure our sacramental and ecclesiastical lives. If you recall, I once ran in horror from the Anglican Catholic Church. I developed five reasons to never become a “Continuer”. Yet in my fourteen years in the Episcopal Church, I saw heresy after heresy. I tried to follow Christ, suffering mockery with my comrades, while others forged a new religion utterly at variance with the historic and Apostolic religion of the faith once delivered to the saints. I fell to the temptation of compromise with the intolerable – valuing ersatz visible union – than to conforming myself to unwavering Gospel truth.

Beaten and humbled, I finally surrendered, yielded my own willfulness, and submitted to the Gospel in the Anglican Catholic Church. Nightmares I had suffered for ten years vanished. My broken and compromised faith slowly healed. I welcomed good old-fashioned sin and forgiveness in the parish without any heresy and false sacramental unity.

We Anglican Catholics truly believe all the ancient truths of the Christian faith without any whitewashing. I came to regard with great affection the Affirmation of St. Louis, a witness for the Gospel against the temptations of today: No mealy mouthed half assurances about abortion; clear teaching about Apostolic Order and completeness of Holy Scripture; traditional liturgy; robust understanding of the sanctity of marriage. I underwent Confirmation at the hands of Archbishop Haverland, as some of you did as well, as some of you look forward to doing.

I look at my friends who are priests in the Episcopal Church and the Neo-Anglicans of the Anglican Church in North America and wonder what happened. Those ecclesiastical bodies either remain or claim to remain in sacramental communion with the Church of England, that same church which claims to ordain women into the priesthood and thereby proves that they do not adhere to the universal Catholic understanding of Holy Order. We simply mean different things with the same words by “priesthood”, “episcopacy”, and “Sacraments” than they do. We continue Anglicanism because we keep the same faith that Lady Julian, Charles I, Samuel Seabury, John Keble, and Albert Chambers did, even if we keep neither the once-venerated name nor the buildings of the Episcopal Church.

We manfully fight against temptation to witness in our public lives in society. We can consider this in two ways, enticing society and threatening society. The company of our good friends and of the “better” elements of society can tempt us away from the Gospel truth. A desire to fit in with those friends who might be offended tempts us into living a public life without spiritual integrity.

We know from Holy Scripture and the teaching of our Mother the Church that we were created male and female. In a day when marriage is openly mocked in both same-sex unions and open acceptance of divorce and remarriage, the confusion brought about by claiming to be male when born female and vice versa tempts many of us to humor those who confound the truth of the matter. When we acquiesce or conform to those who spin fables, who entice us with social station, employment, and good reputation, then we may very well be yielding to the temptation of participating in the sins of others by silence or approval. Many fall into sin under the guise of good manners. Sacrificial loving-kindness produces true good manners but tolerates no caving to temptation.

Dangerous society holds its own temptations as well. During the Boko Haram attack on the Nigerian schoolgirls this April, a seven-year-old girl was asked to deny Christ with a rifle to her head. She refused. Urgently asked again, she refused again. Amazed, the Moslem jihadists let her go. Who of us here today would have been so bold? As Christ said, “Verily I say unto you, Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, he shall not enter therein.”

This past week, the Chaldean Christian primate of Iraq announced that the last Christian families in Mosul had fled with their lives before the onslaught of the ISIL. This is the first time in 1,600 years that this ancient city has had no Christians in it. Many are martyred, others have fled, and their property has been confiscated to distribute to Moslems. In China, the Communist government is trying to take control of all Christian churches. No one is dying, but would I resist unto death the government dictating to me how to preach and administer the Holy Sacraments? I would like to think so. But I have not suffered that temptation yet. I pray that I never do. But our brethren around the world are paying with their lives this very day.

Temptation is so important to our life with God that we pray about it every time we pray the Lord’s Prayer. The wholesome habits, Christian character, and openness to God that helps us avoid and survive temptation helps us flower with the fruit of many virtues and good works pleasing to God.

Remember that in our Christian pilgrimage, God will not allow us to be tempted beyond what we can bear. So whether in our day to day lives, our lives in Christian unity, or moment of need before the despisers of Christ, the Lord will cover and protect us in our hour of temptation.

“Wherefore let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall.”

+ In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

“And every man that striveth for the mastery is temperate in all things. Now they do it to obtain a corruptible crown; but we an incorruptible.”

+ In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

St. Paul clearly says in today’s Epistle both to strive and to gain an incorruptible crown. Faith is a gift. Growing into the likeness of God is a gift. Salvation is a gift. Yet our striving matters. But it is a gift. This confuses us.

Today’s Gospel lesson provides us a parable which helps explain this. The goodman of the house goes out time and again to hire laborers for his field. Despite the difference in time worked, he pays them all the same. Each one of the laborers worked, but the pay they received said nothing about how much they worked and said everything about the generosity of the goodman.

We work with God in our salvation. God esteems our labor, poor that it may be in his infinite majesty. We must labor in order to get paid. Yet we are not paid in accordance with our labor.

We live in a city of wreckage this Sunday morning, even after crews have been working to restore power and fix roads and houses for days. The storm hit us very hard. Thankfully, the earthquake seems to have caused no damage.

Among many, I am thankful for the out-of-town utility crews that have been fixing our power lines. But we cannot simply rest easy and sit back while they come and restore our power. Other things need to be done. At the very least, we need to gather up sticks and put them aside for the county to pick up. We must clean our refrigerators and freezers. Even though the professionals are doing the heavy lifting, we must handle the small stuff. Our homes are not back into good order without a little bit of elbow grease on our part.

So it is with the grace of God. We are entirely stuck without power until he bestows upon us grace from beyond ourselves, grace which we cannot manage on our own. And yet the job is not entirely done without our participation.

So God has chosen us and adopted us in Holy Baptism and given us grace upon grace in our lives. But we must participate in this grace, we must work with this grace, but we may not work for this grace. The distinction is between working in order to gain something and working alongside and in conjunction with something.

Isaiah tells a powerful story at the beginning of his fifth chapter. Let me read it to you.

Now will I sing to my wellbeloved a song of my beloved touching his vineyard. My wellbeloved hath a vineyard in a very fruitful hill: And he fenced it, and gathered out the stone thereof, and planted it with the choicest vine, and built a tower in the midst of it, and also made a winepress therein: and he looked that it should bring forth grapes, and it brought forth wild grapes. And now, O inhabitants of Jerusalem, and men of Judah, judge, I pray you, betwixt me and my vineyard. What could have been done more to my vineyard, that I have not done in it? Wherefore, when I looked that it should bring forth grapes, brought it forth wild grapes? And now go to: I will tell you what I will do to my vineyard: I will take away the hedge thereof, and it shall be eaten up; and break down the wall thereof, and it shall be trodden down: And I will lay it waste: it shall not be pruned, nor digged; but there shall come up briers and thorns: I will also command the clouds that they rain no rain upon it. For the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah his pleasant plant: and he looked for judgement, but behold oppression; for righteousness, but behold a cry.

Here, the Lord does everything but the people do not contribute their little part. Isaiah shows that the Lord will prepare a great thing, but if the people do not do it, not only does it not get done, but the Lord will judge the contrary people.

The Lord gave all manner of goodness to Israel, and Israel spurned God’s love and pursued their own ends. And lest we too quickly hasten to condemn Israel, we do this ourselves all too often. We substitute what we want for what God has clearly communicated to us. We substitute our fleshly desires over holy discipline. We substitute sentimentality over truth and love. We substitute feeling good and avoiding bad feelings over pursuing holiness.

God has given us good things. He has communicated his will to us. He has sent His only-begotten Son into the world to save us from our sins. He has sent the Holy Ghost into the world to dwell in us, making us tabernacles of God himself. And yet we run rampant, choosing our own way. We say with our lips that we love God and our neighbor, but we act like strangers to both neighbor and God.

We ought to pray as Thomas Wilson, sometime Bishop of Sodor and Man, once prayed, “Grant that the end of all my actions, and designs, may be the glory of God.”

This glory of God for which we must strive St. Paul likens to the prize of an athletic contest. Many of us have been watching – when we have electricity – the Winter Olympic Games in Sochi. In the Olympics, individuals and teams strive for the gold. In ancient Greece, athletes strove for laurels, that is, a crown of olive.

St. Paul mentions the crown in II Timothy ii.5: “And if a man also strive for masteries, yet is he not crowned, except he strive lawfully.”

St. Peter mentions the crown in his first epistle: “And when the chief Shepherd shall appear, ye shall receive a crown of glory that fadeth not away.”

St. John mentions the crown in Revelation ii.10b: “be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life.”

And again, St. Paul mentions winning the crown in today’s Epistle: “And every man that striveth for the mastery is temperate in all things. Now they do it to obtain a corruptible crown; but we an incorruptible.”

These bring to my mind my favorite quote of St. John Vianney: “All that we do without offering it to God is wasted.” Indeed, all that we do without God is ineffectual. While our cares and concerns may seem important now, time will wear away even the greatest of monuments, age will wipe away the most notable of lineages. All that is worthy, all that is eternal, all that is virtuous is the Lord’s.

Either you have the crown or you don’t. And the crown is bestowed upon you, it is not earned.

We need sustained discipline. Christians are spiritual athletes, and if we are spiritually lazy, digesting poor spiritual food, and not exercising what God gave us, then we will be sorry spiritual athletes indeed. We must exercise vigorously whether we feel like it or not, listen to our teachers and coaches, eat a proper diet, get enough sleep, and avoid harmful things.

We are not competing against one another. Instead of a race with one winner, all who run the race swiftly and with vigor will win the crown which God alone bestows upon his elect. But we must run. We must run our hearts out. We run a difficult course with treacherous obstacles and dangerous challenges. In this race, some racers will be tempted to quit the course.

We must hold our bodies in subject to our wills and hold our wills in subject to God’s will. The way of Christ is tough and exacting. Soon enough, we will again walk the road to Calvary with Christ and intensely recall how difficult the Via Dolorosa has always been. Running a race whilst carrying your cross is impossible without the grace of God, whose grace, thankfully, he freely bestows upon us. He loves us. He desires us to join in his victory. He does not want a single one of us to turn from God and consort with the enemy. He wants abundant life for us all.

So how do we run this race to the satisfaction of God?

The minimum that we can do are the Duties of Churchmen. But these are not enough. And there is no maximum that we can do.

But still, first we faithfully fulfill the Duties of Churchmen. These duties are:

In addition, we must regularly spend time with God in prayer: adoration, thanksgiving, and confession. Do not worry yourself about naming lists of loved ones to God. Marvel at God, gaze upon him, and thank him. Confess your sins and faults and grow close to him. And here’s something important that we so often miss: Slowly and thoughtfully pray the Lord’s Prayer every day. You may always come to me and ask for more after you do that.

Finally, we must live righteous lives. Are you living in a sinful situation? Stop it. Stop it now. Don’t reason with evil – avoid it. If you are living in fornication, or stealing from others, or shirking your duty, or disrespecting your parents, or greedily desiring more than you need, stop it immediately. Follow the Ten Commandments and all Christian morality.

In all we do, we are to exercise our wills so that we may love our God and our fellow man more fully. Virtue, communion with God, and righteous living all help us love God more fully and thereby love our neighbors more fully as well.

If you faithfully fulfill the six Duties of Churchmen, pray adequately and earnestly every day, and live a life of increasing righteousness, then you are well on your way to running the race worthy of a crown. But remember, you never earn it. You can never do enough to satisfy God. God will grant you your crown of glory because he wants to, not because you feel – or don’t feel – like you deserve it. In God’s open and free love does he give us all that we need for eternal life with him. Accept the goodness and grace which flows from God and strive mighty hard to live a life worthy of Christ in the Holy Ghost.

“And every man that striveth for the mastery is temperate in all things. Now they do it to obtain a corruptible crown; but we an incorruptible.”

+ In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

+ In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

Hosea prophesied to the Jews after the time of Solomon and before the time of the Babylonian captivity. The prophet Amos preceded him by only a little while. Isaiah followed afterwards by a little bit. This was 700 B.C.

Nowadays, we tell ourselves that we know what we want, and then we do what we think needs doing in order to get those things. The Jews of Hosea’s time felt the same way. Centuries of arks, promises, burning bushes, judges, and kingdoms with the constant presence of the Lord God showing them the way gave way to them making idols and worshipping the alien pagan gods of their defeated enemies. They did not do this on a lark; they did these things because they looked around and saw that idols and fertility gods were how the world worked. They simply conformed themselves to the ways of the world. Who could blame them?

The law and the prophets blamed them. Hosea told them that the Lord God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob surely would hold them accountable for their evil ways. God held his people accountable. He had to hold them accountable. He was their God; they were his people. He stood in relationship to them. God was not an option for Israel; they were his chosen people. He chose Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He made a huge promise to Abraham. He saved his holy people from Egyptian slavery. He gave them a new land. And they worshipped him. For a while, anyway.

According to Hosea, when Israel comes back to the Lord, they will be fruitful and grow. “I will be as the dew unto Israel: he shall grow as the lily, and cast forth his roots as Lebanon. His branches shall spread, and his beauty shall be as the olive tree, and his smell as Lebanon.” They will live an abundant life. There will be more of them and they will grow more faithful.

We who follow Christ are made children of Abraham through adoption in Holy Baptism. Today, we Christians are numerically more than those two ancient Middle Eastern kingdoms called by God. Furthermore, we understand that now, through Christ, the law is grafted in our hearts. Now we commune with God directly through the man who is also God: Jesus. Now we commune with God directly through the Body and Blood of His Son, Jesus Christ.

Despite all of these advantages through the Son of God, we suffer the same wanderings of attention and thinking we know best, just as did the people of Israel and Judah back in Hosea’s time. Like Adam and Eve in the garden, we think we know better than God. But we cannot escape God; he knows us, and he calls us to know him. For those of us Baptized into the Baptism of Jesus, we know Him too. The words of Hosea more than twenty seven centuries ago ring true today for Christians in Georgia like it did for the Jews of Israel: